SEASON IN REVIEW
Milwaukie, Oregon driver Mike Bliss picked up his first LASTCAR Cup Series Championship in 2014, scoring five last-place finishes in eight starts during a thirty-six race season. Bliss’ title ended the three-year reign of Michael McDowell, who in 2014 finished last just once in nineteen starts for Leavine Family Racing. Phil Parsons Racing, McDowell’s former team, did not finish last in a single race in 2014 with former Front Row Motorsports driver Josh Wise. Prior to 2014, the Parsons team had finished last 38 times in just 180 starts and claimed four of the previous five LASTCAR Cup Series championships.
Bliss was one of the founding racers of the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series during its inaugural season in 1995. Driving for Jim Smith, Bliss scored his first series victory at North Wilkesboro that September, then he and Smith attempted to qualify for their first Cup race at Phoenix two months later. Starting in 1998, Bliss would make several starts in all three of NASCAR’s top divisions. That year, he made his Busch Series debut at Fontana in the spring, followed by a two-race stint in Cup driving for Buzz McCall at Martinsville and Phoenix. While remaining a top-ten driver in the Truck Series, Bliss got the opportunity to run Cup more regularly in 2000, taking over the #27 Viagra Pontiac ride of struggling rookie Jeff Fuller. That fall at Talladega, as the late Dale Earnhardt scored his final career win, Bliss picked up his first career top-ten finish in the series, coming home 9th.
A move to Jack Roush’s Truck Series team in 2002 resulted in a five-win season and a series championship for Bliss, which he parlayed into a two-year stint with Joe Gibbs Racing in the Busch Series. Bliss finished 5th and 10th in those two seasons and scored his first series victory at Charlotte in late 2004. In a one-off ride for Gibbs in the Cup race at Richmond in September 2004, Bliss finished a career-best 4th. This paved the way for Bliss’ return to Cup in 2005 to drive for Gene Haas in the #0 NetZero / Best Buy Chevrolet – his first full-season ride.
Bliss earned two more top-ten finishes in 2005, but his season is perhaps best-known for the last-corner turn of events during the qualifying race for the NASCAR Nextel All-Star Challenge. Leading off the final corner with a win guaranteeing him a spot in the All-Star Race, Bliss was nudged by a charging Brian Vickers, who nipped Bliss’ spinning car at the line. After a one-year return to the Truck Series, frustration found him once more when Boris Said edged his #49 BAM Racing Dodge for the final transfer spot for the 2007 Daytona 500, costing Bliss a spot in the field.
Since 2007, Bliss has raced most frequently in the NASCAR Busch Series, but has remained a journeyman driver. One of his most impressive accomplishments came in 2009, when he drove for seven different teams – including a last-place run for LASTCAR Champions MSRP Motorsports at Watkins Glen - and finished 5th in series points with another win at Charlotte. The next year, Bliss bounced back in the Daytona 500 by securing Tommy Baldwin Racing’s second-straight start in the race despite having to race a backup car.
Following a season with Curtis Key, current owner of The Motorsports Group, Bliss moved to the #19 team fielded by Mark Smith’s TriStar Motorsports, where he still races today. He’s also run Smith’s equipment in Cup, most often as a “start-and-park” driver under Humphrey-Smith Motorsports. Smith’s Cup operation ceased in September of 2013, cutting short what was becoming a strong challenge to Michael McDowell’s reign as LASTCAR Cup Series Champion. So, heading into 2014, there was no indication Bliss would run anything other than Nationwide Series for TriStar.
However, the 2014 Cup Series season proved unusual regarding last-place finishers. On the one hand, 43-car entry lists for 43-car fields were still common, yet teams that had typically parked in previous seasons no longer found the effort profitable, requiring them to run longer distances on race day. This resulted in a surprising number of different last-place finishers – 25 at season’s end, the most since 2008.
Then, when Swan Racing’s two-car team collapsed in May, came the threat that fewer than 43 cars would start a Cup race for the first time since 2001. This resulted in the formation of two new expansion teams that came together over the summer, each devoted as a “start-and-park” entry for nearly all of their starts: the #93, a fourth Toyota fielded by BK Racing (whose all four teams finished last at least once in 2014), and the #37, a third Chevrolet for Tommy Baldwin Racing. Bliss would drive for both teams to claim his first LASTCAR title.
Bliss’ first Cup start of the year came at Kentucky on June 28, where the threat of a short field encouraged BK Racing to slap “93” stickers on the doors and roof of a backup #23 Dr. Pepper Toyota driven by rookie Alex Bowman. 2009 LASTCAR Cup Champion Dave Blaney had been the 43rd entry for Kentucky, but the #77 Randy Humphrey Racing team withdrew to re-organize their team, prompting BK’s addition of the #93. When Xxxtreme Motorsport’s #44 withdrew just before race weekend for the same reason, the field held at 42. Bliss left the race after 30 laps with transmission issues as the official cause, but was edged for last by Denny Hamlin, who crashed out of 3rd place just before a competition caution.
Bliss’ first last-place finish of the season came two races later at Loudon on July 13, where this time his #93 pulled out of the race with electrical issues after 6 laps. Bliss would not run another Cup race until Atlanta on August 31, where this time he would finish last in Baldwin’s #37 Accell Construction, Inc. Chevrolet due to a vibration after 23 laps.
In two of Bliss’ next five starts with Baldwin, Bliss would run the full distance, finishing 35th at Richmond and 36th at Dover. In the other three races, Bliss parked and finished last, upping his season total to five last-place finishes: the third came at Chicago on September 14, where a vibration ended his run after 13 laps; the fourth at Kansas on October 5, where another vibration halted him at 17 laps, and the championship-securing run at Phoenix on November 9, where brake issues stopped him at 16 laps. In those final two races, Bliss ran without sponsorship as teammate Michael Annett ran the Accell Construction logos on his #7 Chevrolet.
OTHER LASTCAR HEADLINES
At Phoenix on March 2, Morgan Shepherd beat Hershel McGriff’s 1993 record as the NASCAR Cup Series’ oldest last-place finisher at 72 years, 4 months, and 18 days. Shepherd’s #87 Smart Ben / Morris-Hardwick-Schneider Toyota had brake issues after 28 laps. Shepherd had raced at Loudon the previous July, but did not finish last, coming home 41st of 43 drivers in Bob Keselowski’s #52 SupportMilitary.org Toyota. In his return to Loudon in 2014, Shepherd improved to finish 39th, but was the subject of some controversy when his lapped #33 Thunder Coal Chevrolet tangled with the #22 AutoTrader.com Ford of Joey Logano. Shepherd still plans on running more races, but has not yet done so since Loudon.
At Martinsville on March 30, Joe Nemechek scored his only last-place finish of the season and the 33rd of his Cup career, breaking a tie with the late J.D. McDuffie for the most-ever last-place finishes in Cup Series history. Nemechek’s #66 Land Castle Title Toyota fell out with crash damage after he completed 310 of the race’s 500 laps. By Loudon in September, scene of Nemechek’s first career win in 1999, Nemechek had handed over his Identity Ventures Racing ride to Mike Wallace and Brett Moffitt. As of this writing, it appears Nemechek may be done with Cup racing to focus on his son John Hunter Nemechek’s Truck Series career. These same rumors indicate Dave Blaney may be retired as well for the same reason, helping son Ryan Blaney make the transition into Cup in 2015. Over the last six seasons, Nemechek and Blaney have combined to score 37 Cup Series last-place finishes and two LASTCAR titles.
Seven drivers scored their first last-place finishes in 2014. The group was led by Clint Bowyer, who at Richmond on April 26 earned his first last-place finish in a combined 490 starts in NASCAR’s top three divisions when his #15 AAA Toyota started 3rd, but suffered a fiery suspension failure after 159 laps. Bowyer would follow-up that finish with one more finish at Charlotte on October 11 when the engine on his #15 5-Hour Energy Pink Lemonade Toyota let go after 94 laps. Another was Rookie of the Year Kyle Larson, whose #42 Target / Degree Men Chevrolet crashed after 94 laps at Michigan on August 17. Barely missing the list was Kasey Kahne, whose wrecked #5 Farmers Insurance Chevrolet completed the exact same number of laps as last-place finisher Dave Blaney at Pocono on June 8. As of this writing, Kahne is still without a last-place finish in 396 Cup starts.
Four other drivers earned their first last-place finishes in more than five seasons. Dale Earnhardt, Jr. earned his first since Phoenix in the fall of 2007 when his #88 National Guard Chevrolet crashed after 12 laps at Texas on April 7. Tony Stewart picked up two, one at Talladega on May 4 and Homestead on November 16, his first finishes since Las Vegas in 2008. A.J. Allmendinger crashed 19 laps into the July race at Daytona on July 6, the first field he trailed since Charlotte in the fall of 2008. And David Gilliland earned his first since Dover in 2009 when his #38 Love’s Travel Stops Ford crashed after 160 laps of the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte on May 25.
In addition, the iconic #43 of Richard Petty Motorsports (the number fielded by Petty Enterprises for most of the time prior to 2008) earned its first last-place finish since April 1, 2007 when Bobby Labonte’s Cheerios / Betty Crocker Dodge finished under power, but 235 laps down at Martinsville. The 2014 finish came with driver Aric Almirola at Fontana on March 23, when a crash with Brian Scott ended the run for his #43 Farmland Ford after 68 laps.
CHAMPIONSHIP STANDINGS
1st) Mike Bliss (5)
2nd) Dave Blaney (3)
3rd) Clint Bowyer, Landon Cassill, Timmy Hill, Clay Rogers (2)
4th) A.J. Allmendinger, Aric Almirola, Trevor Bayne, Alex Bowman, Dale Earnhardt, Jr., David Gilliland, Denny Hamlin, Travis Kvapil, Kyle Larson, Michael McDowell, Joe Nemechek, Johnny Sauter, Morgan Shepherd, Tony Stewart, Martin Truex, Jr., Ryan Truex, Brian Vickers, Cole Whitt, J.J. Yeley (1)
